Lifehacks for the Mind | Part 9: Trust That Things Will Change Again

A hack that has been giving me tremendous backbone these last couple of weeks is the audacious notion that anything challenging or horrible, anything that the ego may detest to the max and try to resist against will ultimately be over in a little while.

It's like that old proverb from the tale: "This too shall pass". Whenever I find I am getting angry about something not going "my way" or hugely gnawing at my spirit as things turn out differently than expected (expectattions are never a recipe for happiness) I find that the thought of 'things will be different again later, just go on and push through it' is one of the most comforting, even when the ego can't outright seem to agree in the heat of the moment. There is this tiny intuitive voice - probably wisdom - saying that it is true.

It's not that I convince myself of it on a rational level in the situation, but it's simply that enough times have shown this perspective to be true - that things will change again and that there is no need to overly worry or stress about any specific situation as it unfolds. That self-knowledge of my human tendencies and my unique personal attitudes have demonstrated many many memorable times over the years that it's never worth getting all too serious about bumps in the road when I know for certain that things will be different again later and that I always look back and giggle about my utter seriousness as things looked grim.

An analogy that works rather well is, guess what, a psychedelic trip. Things may be tough to intense and unimaginable degrees and an hour later you are sitting with someone in a different location, a different sky, a different vibe and can already look back on this moment of (in)tensity with a little smile. Another analogy would be the sun and the time of day, it's marvellous how different the world can look when viewed in the morning, noon, afternoon, dusk or deep in the night. The same scenery completely drenched in varying degrees of light, color, temperature, air thickness, humidity and so on. No point in thinking at noon that it will always stay like this indefinitely, nature doesn't work like that. the only thing that does seem to have some permanence is cycles, not states.

The lesson therefore is to do my best to catch myself in fits of rage over non-functioning hardware or a challenging situation before my ego can get the luxury of bathing in it for too long. Because if it does bathe in the rage for too long it is quite easy to become more and more enraged over ultimately nothing, like punching myself in the face over someone else's remarks.

Not only that the solution to the challenge is often clouded by overemotionality and butthurt-ness, it's also not healthy. Don't need any stress-related studies for it or anything, I just feel that this "ego-juicing" (as one of my spiritual teachers has called it so eloquently) is rarely useful and super easy because we have been conditioned into it while it eats our body and spirit alive, underscoring the illusory belief that we are separate from everything and the world is basically against it, which is a materialist hangup only plausible on lower states of awareness. Root-chakra topics, ego juicing, lack of insight.

God knows how powerful we could be where we used to not ego-juicing so easily but rather to fully trusting the flow of life to deliver its lessons and challenges because they are needed as they arise, before turning the tide again easing us back into a state of bliss and effortlessness as we allowed ourselves to reserve judgment while the situation came and went - inside the inexplicable cosmic vortex of life on Earth.